Start Saturday: Why You Should Think Again Before Starting A Company

With the last task for Blogging 101, we are asked to develop a regular feature for our blog. I decided to start a feature on startup. I still don’t know whether it’s going to be a weekly or bi-weekly feature but one thing for sure, this feature will be posted on Saturday.

This feature will be based on my experience when I took a course on Technology Based Business last semester at my university. I worked on my startup from scratch for about 3-4 months although I failed and never got my product launched. But there are so many things I learnt and I think I’ll share some of those things with my fellow readers.

For the first post in the series, I’d like to make you think again before you start working on your startup. If you read those glorious success stories about startup founders, it may seem easy to build a startup. You may think that those success are built overnight. Well, it isn’t true! You’re going to have a hard time, and it will take way longer than you think.

Well, here I wrote some things to consider again before you start your own company.

1. You’re Going to Live Like A Poor Man

At least at first. Before you quit your comfortable daily job that earns you a nice bucks, you should know that you won’t be making any money at first. You won’t be living like those successful millionaires or billionaires when you first start your company. Truth is you’re probably going to break your bank to fund your company. You should be ready to live like a poor man for the first few months when you start your company, at least until you have a regular paying customers. But even a few customers won’t give secure you some profit at first.

So, if you aren’t comfortable with being poor I suggest you to think again before you decide to quit your nice paying job. At least, build some savings first to make sure you can survive your first few months without any income.

2. You Won’t Get The Freedom You Think You’ll Have

If you want to start a company because you wanted more freedom or because you think you’ll have more free time not working on a 9-5 basis, you should think again. Founding your company means you’re going to work on it whenever you can. You’re going to sleep less. You’ll have much fewer or even no time to slack off. You’re going to work 24/7! Well, it may seems like a hyperbolic but you get the point, you’ll have a less leisure time.

3. It Takes Way More Time Than You Think It Would

Do you know that Google started in 1996 and a few people even barely heard about it three years later in 1999? It took a whole 8 years before Google went public in 2004 with a $23B market capitalization. You won’t probably know either that Facebook started in 2003 and still losing $3.6 million in 2005. It also took 8 years to turn Facebook into an overnight success.

You’ve probably read a lot stories about startup. Even though it may seems like a success built overnight, it’s not! Building a successful company takes time, way more time than you think it would. You may want to triple or quadruple any number of years you think it would take to successfully build your startup.

4. You Should Be Ready to Lose Your Partner, Friends, Even Family

A lot of your life will change when you first start your company. You’ll certainly have less time to spend with your loved ones. You may not going to hang out with your friends for a few years. You’re also going to visit your family less frequent. As in number 1, you’ll have less to no income to spend too. All of these are going to be hard both for you and your relatives. Okay, you may be strong enough to get through all of these. But how about your partner? Your friends? Your family? They think they didn’t sign up for these, and probably they’re going to leave you because all of these problems!

Well, if you’re not ready to lose some relationships. I think you should reconsider building your own company. If you still insist to, explain to your partner and friends and family that you’re gonna have a bad time and seek understandings from them.

5. You’re More Than Likely to Fail

Do you know that 92% of startups fail at their 3rd year? That means if you and 99 other people start a company at the same time, there will only be 8 of you that are still struggling with your company by 2018. You’re going to fail at some point and you should be ready for that.

All of these think should be considered when you’re going to start your own company. I simply want to inform you that the startup life won’t be as wonderful as you think it would be. I want to make sure that you’re ready with the consequences you’re going to have when you first build your startup.

Anyway, if you’re still interested on building your startup, I’ll be posting a few things about what you need and what you can do in the first few months in the next weeks. Stay tuned every Saturday!

Start Saturday is a weekly feature about startup. This feature is written based on my personal experience when I took a Tech-Based Business class in my college back in the Spring Semester 2015. I will write anything I learned both from the class and from the failure of my startup.

5 thoughts on “Start Saturday: Why You Should Think Again Before Starting A Company”

You’re right about all of the above. And it’s also true that many successful entrepreneurs have some kind of safety net, primarily financial, as in access to capital or ongoing funding. BUT you have already figured out so much, at a really early age! Keep trying, I have a feeling you’re going to succeed. You know the saying, behind every “overnight success” are years of hard work and persistence. Good luck!